Journal of the Physical Society of Japan 81 (2012) No.

SPECIAL T OPICS

Preface

Recent Developments in Superconductivity

Editors of this Special Topics Section: Kenji Ishida (Kyoto University) Masao Ogata (University of Tokyo)

The year 2011 marks the 100th anniversary of the discovery of superconductivity in mercury by Heike Kamerlingh Onnes. This means that January 2012 is just the start of a new century for superconductivity, and The Journal of Physical Society of Japan is publishing this Special Topics on superconductivity to celebrate the anniversary. In the rst 50 years after its discovery, studies of superconductivity were mainly on metals and focused on the understanding of this mysterious and fully quantum phenomenon. Conventional superconductivity was explained reasonably well by the BardeenCooperSchrieer theory proposed in 1957. However, after the discovery of superconductivity in the heavy-fermion CeCu2 Si2 in 1979 and in the organic compound (TMTSF)2 PF6 under pressure in 1980, the superconductivity observed in strongly correlated electron systems became a very attractive area of research in condensed-matter physics. We expected a new era of superconductivity at that time. In 1986, the cuprate superconductivity was discovered with superconducting transition temperatures exceeding 150 K, which would not have been expected when superconductivity was rst discovered 100 years ago. Furthermore, in the iron-pnictide superconductors discovered in 2008, Fe atoms, which had been considered to be completely unrelated to superconductivity, were found to play important roles in superconductivity. Presently, research on superconductivity continues to be one of the most important topics in condensed-matter physics, and research is still expanding rapidly in unexpected directions. In this Special Topics, we have focused on novel superconducting compounds that have been discovered in the last 30 years, and have asked researchers representing each eld to write vivid review articles focused on the most prominent recent developments in their elds. We would like to thank all the contributors who were willing to accept our oer and have carried out their hard job despite their extremely busy schedules. We believe that the papers in this Special Topics will be very useful for a wide range of researchers and will also demonstrate that superconductivity is the most challenging playground in emergent physics.